Andy Roddick is the next big thing in tennis and he should add some fizz to the Grand Slams
Jon Henderson
First, the slightly disappointing news about Andy Roddick: a tennis magazine has described the 18-year-old American as being “refreshingly normal”. How much more refreshing normality can we take on the men’s tour?
The rest, though, is rather more promising because Roddick is plainly an exceptional talent, a player whose Wimbledon debut this year may even prove to be refreshingly exciting after the tournament’s years of domination by a familiar cast of male stars, or rather a familiar male star.
Wimbledon has a problem. Now that the grass-court season on the men’s and women’s world tours has been squeezed to barely three weeks in the middle of summer, the tournament is becoming increasingly marginalised.
More and more the players regard competing on grass in England as a tiresome interlude from playing on the clay and hard courts they encounter just about everywhere else. Less and less are they prepared to make the necessary adjustments to their playing styles to try to win Wimbledon, preferring to lose early and push off to find more familiar surfaces.
As admirable as Pete Sampras’s domination of Wimbledon has been, it may not have been quite so easy if other leading players had come to the championships in a more competitive frame of mind. While Sampras has been winning seven of the past eight Wimbledons Holland’s Richard Krajicek interrupted his run in 1996 there have been six different Australian Open champions, six different French Open champions and four different US Open champions.
And while Sampras has been winning, the group of serve-and-volleyers who might unseat him has hardly changed: Goran Ivanisevic, Krajicek, Pat Rafter, Mark Phili-ppoussis, Greg Ru-sedski and Tim Henman.
And of these, only Philippoussis is the boyhood side of 25.
So who is this Roddick guy? And can he really make an impact?
He ended last year at 158th in the world, leaving us guessing whether this was a young hustler they call him the A-Rod who would soon be sussed or whether there was real substance to his rapid advance.
He was up to 119 by mid-March when he entered the second of the year’s Masters events in Miami, and his run to the quarter-finals, scalping two former world number ones, Marcelo Rios and Sampras, along the way, removed any doubt about the validity of claims being made on his behalf.
More evidence followed with his victory three weeks ago in the Atlanta clay-court tournament, making him the first American teenager in only his 10th tournament to claim a title on the men’s tour since Michael Chang won in 1992. The very next week he won the US clay-court title in Houston to emulate Andre Agassi’s feat in the late Eighties of winning back-to-back titles while still a teenager. He won 20 out of 21 sets, including the last 19, in achieving those two title successes and moved up to 46 in the world rankings, passing, among others, Rusedski.
Roddick’s next appearance is on European clay this week when he joins Sampras and Jan-Michael Gambill in a team event in Dusseldorf to complete his build-up for the French Open, which starts on Monday at Roland Garros.
Even Roddick, thelll youngest of three brothers whoselll refreshinglll normality usually llll precludes his saying anything remotely boastful, was moved to a mild bout of self-congratulation after his Houston win: “It’s big. Any time someone wins two ATP tournaments in two weeks it’s pretty good.”
Mostly, though, Roddick, from Omaha, Nebraska, relishes his “regular guy” image. He likes to tell the story of how his friends greeted him after winning the 2000 Australian Open boys’ title. “When I got back from Australia, they said: ‘How’d you do?’ When I said ‘I won’, they said: ‘Great, what d’ya wanna do this weekend?'”
He says this attitude to his success by those he mixes with socially helps him to handle the pressure. “People talk about the weight of expectation a lot more than I think about it. But it really doesn’t bother me. It’s kind of fun actually. I’m just going along with the ride.”
As a player, the 1,9m Roddick’s greatest asset in a strong, all-round game is his serve, which has already broken the 224kph barrier and this is why his Wimbledon debut might just be the most explosive by a male teenager since Boris Becker. A big serve at Wimbledon, where the grass speeds the ball on its way, may not be some people’s idea of a spectacle but is as effective as a 7ft forward in a school basketball team.
Andre Agassi was so impressed with what he saw at the Ericsson Open that he visited Roddick in the locker room during a rain break. He advised him to mix up his serves and not to rely solely on pace. Moments later Roddick had wrapped up the first set, 12-10 in a tiebreak, with a kicking first serve that was 55kph slower than normal.
“Andre’s the man,” Roddick said respectfully. “I appreciate everything from him. To have someone who’s one of the greatest champions of all time to really want to help you out…”
It was a small example of what his coach, Tarik Benhabiles, the former French player who is now a naturalised American, says sets Roddick apart his ability to learn quickly. “If he makes a mistake, he analyses it and can correct it half an hour later and put himself in the right direction,” says Benhabiles.
Player and coach can rally compliments as freely as they do balls on the practice court. “All I can say is Andy has no limits,” says Benhabiles. “I think he is going to do big things on the tour.”
How about starting with Wimbledon, Andy? The championships need you whether you’re refreshingly normal or, even more refreshingly, not.
ENDS